"All this region is very level and full of forests, vines and butternut trees. No Christian has ever visited this land and we had all the misery of the world trying to paddle the river upstream." Samuel de Champlain

The results of tests for levels of harmful bacteria are expected soon in the wake of a major discharge of sewage into Lake Champlain at Burlington. About 2.5 million gallons of stormwater and untreated sewage flowed from the Perkins Pier wastewater treatment plant Wednesday morning (April 20 2011) due to an “operator-induced equipment failure,” according to the Burlington Public Works Department. Pumps that normally would inject chlorine into raw sewage during stormwater surges did not deploy at about 6 a.m. because a plant employee failed to follow correct operating procedures, said Laurie Adams, the department’s assistant director for waterquality.

Health risks posed by the bacteria-laden water are uncertain. Tests for E. coli content of the discharge typically take 24 hours, Adams said. Cold water temperatures likely would reduce direct human contact with unhealthy concentrations of bacteria, she added.

Significant dilution by rainwater occurred during the 90-minute incident, said the plant’s project engineer, Steve Roy. Recent rainstorms introduced about 7.7 million gallons of stormwater into the Perkins Pier system, he said. Roy estimated the sewage content of the 2.5 million untreated gallons at 10 percent or less (about 250,000 gallons) — or about one-third the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

In contrast, a Burlington sewage pipe that cracked beneath the Winooski River in April 2005 spewed at least 4 million gallons of raw sewage downstream.

Previous disinfection failures took place at the Perkins Pier plant in March 2007 and July 2005, Adams said. “This sort of thing is never good,” she said. “A much bigger concern would be if this would take place in the summer, when recreational use is high.” Discharge from the plant takes place through a pipe that diffuses effluent beyond the breakwater, from 1,000 to 2,400 feet from the shoreline, Adams said.

Phosphorus- and nitrogen-rich sewage is never a welcome contribution to Lake Champlain’s chronic nutrient pollution, said Buzz Hoerr, chairman of the Vermont Citizen Advisory Committee in the international Lake Champlain Basin Program based in Grand Isle.

Algae and other aquatic plants flourish when over-fertilized, and when they decompose they rob aquatic life of oxygen.

Although the city blamed operator error, the spill raises broad questions about the lake’s vulnerability to aging, underfunded or poorly staffed sewage treatment plants, said James Ehlers, executive director of the Colchester-based nonprofit Lake Champlain International. “It’s going to take some serious political courage to come to voters to ask for sufficient funding to process our water,” he said. “If it doesn’t happen, our economy’s going to suffer, because people aren’t going to come and enjoy our water resources. “Everyone seems to be rolling the dice here, hoping that the failures don’t happen on a July 4th weekend,” Ehlers added.

About 200,000 people in Vermont, New York and Quebec get their drinking water from Lake Champlain, said Louis Porter, who advocates as Lake Champlain lakekeeper with the Montpelier-based Conservation Law Foundation. “Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident,” Porter said of Wednesday’s incident. “Since the state began tracking improper spills from wastewater plant infrastructure in 2007, there have been close to 150 such incidents around Vermont.” "

I'm the second generation of my family that lives in Richelieu, Quebec, in Canada. My family tree, both from my mother's and my father's side, has its roots in Quebec since the beginning of the 1600s: my ancestors crossed the ocean from France, leaving Perche and Normandy behind them. Both French AND English are my mother tongues: I learned to talk in both languages when I was a baby, and both my parents were perfectly bilingual too.